Thoughts and commentary about the janitorial and office cleaning business.

Sanitation

08/02/2017

Seems your kitchen sponge harbors bacteria - "lots and lots of bacteria". Research published in Scientific Reports identifies, among others, close relatives of the bacteria that cause meningitis and pneumonia, so we're not just worrying about the common cold here.

I even had a picture of sponges, on a sink.

It makes sense. Sponges have lots of nooks and crannies to shelter critters; it seems they also develop a biofilm on the surface to provide even more breeding ground.

So - can't you clean them? I'd heard, some years ago, that a minute in a microwave would kill everything living in your dishrag, so I do that regularly with rag and sponge (or at least as regularly as I do anything these days). But it turns out that the microwave process produces more robust bacteria; as Darwin noted (though not in respect to microwaves), under stress, the weak die, the very strong (those best adapted to the given environment) survive, to reproduce. it's a bit like ending the antibiotic treatment when you began to feel better, rather than when you use it up. Or like over-prescribing antibiotics.

The only good way to insure yourself a sanitary kitchen sponge? Go buy a new one. I'm thinking of doing so. I'll have to see how often I can come up with 79 cents.

I shall pass this on to my commercial cleaning customers as well. They mostly have sponges in the lunchroom sink, with lots and lots of people contributing to the bacteria population, and I'll bet nobody ever thinks to toss and replace the sponge. Or the dish rag.

04/26/2017

Theft of toilet paper has gotten so severe in Beijing's Temple of Heaven Park (a major tourist destination) that the authorities have installed facial recognition software on the TP dispensers; anyone wanting more that his proper allocation must sit tight (as it were) for nine minutes before being allowed another two sheets. (Here's the full CNN article.)

It seems that China does not usually offer said necessity in public restrooms - one must bring one's own. So perhaps folks have not gotten used to an economy that provides abundance, at least of necessities. (Or perhaps, the economy does not provided necessities as effectively as we might assume - just reading "The End of the Asian Century" by Michael Auslin - interesting stuff.)

The prime perpetrators are "older people - those born in the 40s and 50s" (I'm insulted); they grab big wads to take home.

On the other hand, I can't help recalling a high tech manufacturing facility we had as a client down in Chandler, one of Phoenix's suburbs (we provide commercial janitorial service in the whole metropolitan region). They had a small locked caged area in a back corner of the shop. Much expensive tools, material and product scattered around the facility, but what they kept in the locked cage was....the toilet paper. Maybe cultures are more alike, at the necessity level, than we appreciate.

I also can't help but think of the media coverage given to an indicator of the severity of Venezuela's current economic crisis - their inability to either produce or import sufficient TP. Perhaps, years back when they might have afforded the gadget, they should have done a better job rationing the stuff.

04/13/2017

A great example of how transmission of disease around the facility can devastate any enterprise.

It seems that over the last few days, 9 members of the Boston Red Sox, plus their play-by-play announcer, are down with the flu. The thing about a ball club is that many of their players are specialists; you only have one go-to shortstop (not all can be a utility infielder). That many players out, performance suffers.

Kind of like most firms.

Which is why well designed janitorial service, in addition to a bit of sanitation through the workday, is important to your bottom line. Touch points (door jambs and push bars, counters, the handle on the drinking faucet and the one on the coffee pot) harbor critters, and are touched by most everybody through the work day. The janitor ought sanitize (not just "clean") them all every evening, and the occupants ought hit them with a sanitary wipe often in between.

02/02/2017

Received a call from a client this morning, the facility manager of a large insurance agency. He has something of an epidemic of "pink eye" around the office, with perhaps a half dozen of his folks affected. Wanted to know what he, or we, might be able to do about it.

Pink eye can be several things. A somewhat unusual allergy affecting multiple people simultaneously seems unlikely, so we are left with viral or bacterial infection. Bacteria is the more serious, and indicates medical treatment, but the symptoms (green discharge, eyes swollen shut) are not present. So, we're likely left with viral.

Generally with a virus you can vaccinate beforehand, but not kill the virus once it hits; you just try to mitigate the symptoms, and let the immune system work its magic. So all we can do regarding the office environment is prevent the spread of the illness, which is what my client called about in the first place.

The pathogen can be either touch-point or air borne; left on the refrigerator door or coffee pot handle, or broadcast by the fellow in the next cubicle coughing without a hand or tissue over his mouth.

Providing nightly janitorial service, with an eye (no pun intended) on health, we stress touch-point sanitation, using microfiber wipes and a hydrogen peroxide solution, and full restroom/break-room disinfection, with a hospital grade product; we can generally leave the facility pretty healthy for the next morning. Problem is, the first fellow who scratches his itchy eyelid and then touches a doorknob re-infects the place.

I asked my crew to double down on the sanitation procedures, but also suggested the client 1) pick up some antiseptic wipes, and get someone to wipe down touch-points around the office multiple times per day; 2) advise staff to avoid shaking hands, or using another's phone or keyboard, and to avoid coughing at people (perhaps hand out some surgical masks for emphasis); 3) pick up a barrier hand lotion (we use one by R & R Lotion, a local Scottsdale and Phoenix supplier), which kills pathogens on one's hands for some four hours after application. We offer the latter to our cleaning crews, to defeat anything that gets past the latex gloves; I use it religiously myself, before visiting clients, or attending Chamber meet-and-greet events, or Sunday church.

01/05/2017

Preventing the spread of disease pathogens is the subject of a Time Magazine article featuring an old friend, the University of Arizona's Dr. Charles Gerba.

While the article (with the above name) is directed at consumers, not at my commercial cleaning industry, it highlights several items of concern that I had not thought of: for instance, cell phones. Ponder that for a minute - your phone is in your hand, up against mouth, nose and ear. And how often do we borrow a companion's phone, for a quick call? Or to say "Hi" to the mutual friend he's talking to? How often do you (or that companion) clean and sanitize the phone?

Fortunately, adequate sanitizing is simple - just wipe the phone with a sanitizing wipe. I shall start.

Gerba mentions picking up germs on one's hands while out and about. You really don't want to transfer the the critters to your home or office. So, wash your hands first thing on returning.

Think about your kitchen chopping board, or the scrub brush by the sink. You never get them really clean, so toss them in the dishwasher.

We've one innovation to add. We furnish our janitorial service crews with a sanitizing hand lotion. Unlike alcohol based hand sanitizers, which kill pathogens only at the moment of use, the lotion (it's actually a barrier lotion) provides protection for several hours. Our crews use it under their latex gloves, for protection in case of a hole or tear in the glove, and for protection while taking the gloves off (recall that the nurses in Texas who contracted Ebola apparently did so while disrobing). I keep a small bottle of the stuff in my car, for use before visiting a client, doing a Chamber of Commerce "meet and greet" session, and before church (we do a lot of hugging and hand shaking).

10/21/2016

Caught a Herald article out of Burke County, North Carolina, about an elementary school with a case of shingella, a moderately severe gastrointestinal illness mostly communicated by touching contaminated objects.

The article mentions an initial stab at combating spread of the disease by upping restroom cleaning frequency to twice daily. Me, I'd be inclined to do a bit more, but not a bad effort. The more often you clean and sanitize restrooms, as well as lunchrooms and touch-points (door jambs, phone hand sets, computer gear, door knobs) around the facility, the more you prevent disease transmission. The less often you do so, the more disease you get. This is not rocket science. (Here's a quick idea of what we do in the commercial janitorial field.)

The situation did get me thinking about likely effects of a November ballot proposition here in Arizona.

The proposition, currently a few points up in the polls, would raise Arizona's hourly minimum wage from $8.25 to $12.00. In many lower skilled, and hence lower pay, occupations, like the janitorial service we provide, labor tends to be well over half of the provider's expense, and hence of his pricing. Raising one's price to his customers by something close to 50% is likely to be a deal breaker. What I do find is that when customers decide that they cannot afford a particular price, they look at cutting service frequency. In this case, cutting a 5-night per week cleaning job down to 3-nights (or perhaps 2, given that the less frequently you clean a place, the more time it takes each night).

So I'm guessing that, besides massive layoffs in janitorial and many other industries, we'll see a whole lot of facilities being cleaned much less frequently - including their restrooms.

This will be a boon not only for the clerks at the local unemployment office, but for the health care and drug industries as well.

10/04/2016

What with being in the commercial janitorial industry, I'm particularly attuned to the availability, in our various client restrooms, of that most necessary sort of paper. Several years ago, I looked at lack of availability on Venezuela's consumer market as a leading indicator of economic collapse. On a (hopefully) lighter note, I noted the Air Force Academy, faced with a temporary budget crunch tied to the sequester, had the cadets choose between lacking TP and canceling the football program. Their decision should be obvious.

This one I had not seen coming - a legal collision between Kleenex and one of the most prominent mathematicians working today, an Oxford dean who's published with Stephen Hawking:

"Last December, Sir Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, came face to face with his own copyrighted polygon pattern in Kleenex quilted toilet paper. When his wife returned from the market with the embossed rolls, Penrose expressed "astonishment and dismay" upon seeing the use to which his discovery had been put.

"Penrose devised the nonrepeating five-fold symmetrical pattern in the 1970s by using two kinds of diamond shapes—fat and thin—to create what is now called Penrose tiling. The pattern, which was thought not to exist in nature before Penrose's discovery, has subsequently been found in many physical and biological phenomena.

"According to the British newspaper, The Independent, the pattern "has deeper mathematical implications because it fits halfway between chaos and orderliness and is one of a family of noncomputable problems." (Noncomputability is a key concept needed to understand consciousness, according to Penrose's best-selling book The Emperor's New Mind.)...

"The quilted British tissue is embossed with the pentagonal pattern to make it "thicker and softer," according to Kimberly-Clark literature. Penrose's writ argues that making the tissue fluffier enables manufacturers to reduce the amount of paper used on each roll. "But, if the pattern repeats itself, the tissue would likely bunch up, looking unattractive," the suit claims. 'That can be corrected using a Penrose-type pattern that lets the paper sit evenly on the roll.' "

There is a deeper significance here than I'd realized. Though, the "halfway between chaos and orderliness" bit seems to fit my life closer than I'd like to admit.

09/30/2016

Caught an article in their local press about a grade school school in Connecticut experiencing an outbreak of a viral infection; the article touted the school district's bringing in the janitorial contractor to do a one shot sanitizing of touch-points - desk tops, door jambs, and so on.

This sounds good at first. But I noticed, further down the article, that kids will be infectious before showing symptoms. So, we sanitize the school tonight, and a kid (or several) comes to school tomorrow, feeling and looking healthy, and touching things. The school stayed sanitized from when the janitor finished last night to when the first child touched a doorknob this morning.

A couple of months ago, a long time client - a small architecture office, that we clean just once per week - called about several of their staff being sick. They asked us to temporarily up service to nightly, with an emphasis on sanitizing touch-points; they also had the wisdom to ask what else could be done. I set them up with boxes of sanitizing wipes, for use by their staff all day long, and pointed them in the direction of a pathogen killing lotion that we issue to our nightly cleaning crews, claimed to be effective for some 4 hours after applying to ones hands (thus protecting the user, and anything or anyone he touched).

In passing, our normal protocol on cleaning and sanitizing touch-points involves Diversey AlphaHP, a hydrogen peroxide cleaner-sanitizer with a 30- to 60-second kill time, applied with a microfiber cloth. We did the same for the intensive regime, but followed it with a misting of Diversey's Virex, a quat based hospital grade disinfectant. I needs 10 minutes dwell time, wet, which is hard to achieve on general office touch-points, so I did not claim full disinfection to the client, but it doubtless gave the already quite effective HP a good boost.

My client's (and my) response, while a bit more costly, seems an approach much more likely to work. And it's not likely to be more costly than having more staff out sick or, worse, sick at work.

09/09/2016

The Food and Drug Administration has announced the banning of some 19 active ingredients in "anti-bacterial" hand soap, beginning in 2017. The banned chemicals will include the two most common, triclosan and triclocaroan. Here's a bit from the announcement:

"Companies will no longer be able to market antibacterial washes with these ingredients because manufacturers did not demonstrate that the ingredients are both safe for long-term daily use and more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of certain infections. Some manufacturers have already started removing these ingredients from their products."

We've noticed for several years that "anti-microbial" hand soap demonstrates, in various studies, no benefits over simple soap-and-water hand washing. Evocatively, my friend Charles Gerba, a microbiologist down the road at the University of Arizona, has documented serious microbial growth in not only ordinary liquid hand soap, but in the antimicrobial stuff as well. Go figure.

In providing janitorial services Phoenix, we try to be in a position to provide informed advice to our clients on sanitation issues; you'll notice (under the "sanitation" filter) various discussions I've posted on hand dryers blowing pathogens around the restroom, flushing with the seat cover down to prevent a similar situation, proper hand washing, touch point sanitation, UV light inspections, the importance of keeping the floor drain full, as well as the above. And on the availability of toilet tissue in Venezuela, as well as Chicago schools.

08/09/2016

One of several myths, regarding cleaning, surfaces again. Wish I had a beer for every time I've had to explain that cleaning, sanitation and disinfection products are generally odorless; a "fresh" or "medicine-like" smell is generally an added fragrance, added for purposes of marketability, not efficacy. Fragrances generally ought be avoided. Some folks have serious chemical sensitivities, which can cause immediate issues; all of us ought not make a habit of such exposure.

Another misconception is that "natural" is "healthy". In fact, substances such as d-limonene (orange oil), pine, and essential oils consist of organic compounds (thus "natural") that are known to react with airborne pollutants in smog—or ozone from office equipment—to create substances such as formaldehyde. Probably don't want to inhale too much of that.

Further, many "air fresheners" simply add a fragrance to mask the offending odor. Much better, when disinfecting restrooms, to investigate and deal with the odor itself; we've a detailed section in our ops manual devoted to exactly that. You can learn quite a bit by looking at restroom airflow (how's the vent fan?), water level in floor drains, using a black-light to identify overlooked "bodily fluids", and so on.

Admittedly, I've occasionally given in. For the janitorial service Phoenix client who simply will not be educated, a couple drops of the ubiquitous pine based cleaner, placed inconspicuously behind the toilet, works wonders.

We've offered janitorial services in Phoenix since 1974; hold the BBB's A-plus rating; and have long been in the forefront of the industry in environmentally sensitive cleaning for health, safety and security. Our office cleaning program can generally improve Indoor Air Quality, in the size range of most allergens, by a factor of 50%, as reflected in our ongoing IAQ sampling. We also furnish Green Seal certified recycled restroom paper products and janitorial supplies.